The ironmongers' souk is a cold, narrow alleyway of misery. Water runs between the broken, slippery moss-covered paving stones and collects in black muddy puddles where the earth is exposed. Among the workers squatting in the small, dark workshops are grimy 10-year-old boys, sitting on the ground fashioning rusting iron rods into links for chains, or pounding red-hot lengths of iron into hoes, rakes and other tools.
Abu Ali, the owner of one shop, told me the boys earned Iraqi dinars 1,250 or $0.60 a day. He would not give their ages. Some may have been two or three years older than they look. The growth of many children has been stunted by sanctions.
The children working in this filthy and dangerous environment are at risk because they must earn a pittance to buy bread. Millions of Iraqi children are hungry and in need of medical attention which their parents cannot afford.
The International Study Team of Canadian and Norwegian doctors and public health experts, which reported on Iraqi children in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 war, issued an interim study on the present situation yesterday. Today the mortality rate among babies and young children is 2.5 times that of 1990, before the imposition of sanctions and the war.
Dr Eric Hoskins, team co-ordinator, said 13 million Iraqi children "are at grave risk of death, starvation and trauma if there is another war. They are more vulnerable than ever" due to 12 years of sanctions. Although "nutrition has improved" since the oil-for-food programme began in 1997, half a million are "malnourished and underweight." These children are at point zero.
"No one is ready for war," Dr Hoskins said. Sixteen million Iraqis are totally dependent on rations.
He said that during the 1991 war the infrastructure, which depends on electric power, was reduced to 5 per cent capacity. It has recovered to 68 per cent.
Two Norwegian psychologists, Dr Atle Dyregrov and Dr Magne Raundalen, who have conducted field surveys here before, found that children are exhausted by fear which they cannot discuss with their parents who are also afraid and traumatised. Dr Raundalen said: "Iraqi parents have no good news to tell their children. Their attitude is: 'If you don't talk about your fear, we won't talk about ours'."
Dr Hoskins said the study was timed for publication ahead of today's receipt by the Security Council of the report of the UN weapons inspectors. "Our aim is to alert the world to the possible consequences of war."
